42% of Germans Want To Hear Less of Nazi Past

Child jumping over the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin Image by Getty Images

Child jumping over the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin Image by Getty Images
On the day that survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp gather to mark the anniversary of its liberation, the Forsa poll showed that 58 percent of Germans were unwilling to limit or end their exposure to the history of the war.
With the 70th anniversary of the end of the war coming up in May, German television channels are filled with war-related dramas and documentaries and newspapers are devoting pages to revisit the last weeks of the fighting.
“There is a certain feeling that a lot is being shown about the past, about the horrors of it all, the liberation of Auschwitz and so on. It goes in the direction of people being swamped by it,” Forsa chief Manfred Guellner told Reuters.
In recent years Germans have become more willing to see themselves as victims of the war they started. This has coincided with a desire by some lawmakers to play a more active role globally to more closely match Germany’s economic might.
However, the Forsa poll showed that only 16 percent of those asked want Germany to assume a leading international role.
On Wednesday, top-selling Bild ran a double-page spread on the Allied bombing of German cities, with photos of Munich in flames, a flattened Cologne and burning bodies in Dresden.
Commemorations marking the liberation of concentration camps across Germany and eastern Europe have also had prominent coverage over the last few months.
Some 100 survivors of Bergen-Belsen, a camp in the northern state of Lower Saxony, join a series of events to remember the more than 70,000 people who died there between 1941 and 1945.
One of victims who died there was Dutch Jewish teenager Anne Frank. Frank’s diaries, which she wrote while in hiding in Amsterdam, were found after the war and published, becoming an international literary sensation.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.